New Time Format

As you can see, the forums have a new time format. Now, instead of time being something like 'Today, 3:00' it says '1 Hour Ago'.

The reason for the change is because I am realizing more than ever what a huge, global community we are. And by far, the majority of our traffic are unregistered guests who don't have the ability to specify a timezone. Therefore, all times for unregistered users are in EST, my local timezone.

But I realized that doesn't really make sense. Because suppose Davey comes to DaniWeb and he sees that nothing was posted in the past 7 hours. That could be a major turn-off! And in reality, posts might have just been made minutes ago.

I noticed it nearly immediately when I logged onto DaniWeb. The change is a good one, and helps even when you have the timezone set correctly. In the past, I always had to look at the current time to figure out how long ago a particular entry was posted. This feature is a good improvement.

Absolute times do add a detail that relative times do not. For example, a stale "Who's Online" page. It says Joe Blow is looking at my post 1 minute ago. Oh, but that was a "Who's Online" from 3 hours ago.

Absolute time may have told my 5:10 for both. This I have learned to recognize and use. This addition is, for me, another inconvenience.

There is more than this one way that it affects me negatively, but I don't feel my opinion makes any difference such that thoughtfully enumerating them would do much.

"A stopped clock is right twice a day". A relative clock may not have that going for it.

While you might find absolute time more convenient, you have to agree that for unregistered users, which account for 85% of our website traffic, will all see the WRONG times (anyone out of the EST time zone at least) ... and the wrong absolute times are worse than the correct relative time ... all the time.

So, the bottom line is that it simply makes more sense to provide something that is correct to 100% of the users (convenience being irrelevant as long as the data is at least correct) as opposed to something that is wrong for 85%, more convenient for 10%, and inconveniences 5% (of which you're one).

The 85% is a true statistic ... the 10% and 5% breakdown I just made up but the point is that from the responses in this thread, more people like the change than don't.

I also think that a lot of other websites are sharing my opinion in this. I actually initially got the idea from Digg, who also uses relative times, and they're a news source!

The only thing that I do have to say is that while the forum printable versions do use absolute times, I'm having a problem getting the blogs and code snippets to do the same, but that is a bug which I'm working on.

So while I do think absolute times have their place, I feel that they are more for news aggregators and stuff of that sort, because, for the most part, leaving and coming back to the site hours later just isn't the way most people interact with online communities and forum systems.

While you might find absolute time more convenient, you have to agree that for unregistered users, which account for 85% of our website traffic, will all see the WRONG times (anyone out of the EST time zone at least) ... and the wrong absolute times are worse than the correct relative time ... all the time.

Yes, yes, yes. One-offs and fly-bys matter more than regulars.

So, the bottom line is that it simply makes more sense to provide something that is correct to 100% of the users (convenience being irrelevant as long as the data is at least correct) as opposed to something that is wrong for 85%, more convenient for 10%, and inconveniences 5% (of which you're one).

The 85% is a true statistic ... the 10% and 5% breakdown I just made up but the point is that from the responses in this thread, more people like the change than don't.

I also think that a lot of other websites are sharing my opinion in this. I actually initially got the idea from Digg, who also uses relative times, and they're a news source!

Provide a feature for those that don't care in order to screw some who do? M'kay. The world turns.

It would be one thing if this were a change which helped guests and hurt all regular members. But, based on this thread at least, you're the only one who doesn't love the new format.

Well it IS ok Dani but it IS confusing if your trying to find out WHAT TIME it was posted on Jan 14th for example........

Maybe having a POPUP of what time it was posted appear if you hover over there handle (You know how that menu appears if you click thier handle,well if you HOVER over it,maybe a POPUP with the time of that post can be displayed) (Like it does when you hover over an avatar,it popups and says "The Dude's avatar" for example)

Dani, now that you're back, could you please make some comment on this? There seems to be support for adding the actual TOD to the post time, but we have no idea whether you agree or disagree. You've been so silent. I'd like to at least know if it's a possibility or not.

Or just give registered members the ability to modify the time/date format that they see in their user CP...

I already looked into this option awhile ago but it would take a bit of investigation on my part as I can't seem to figure out the scope of the variable which controls the time format, and it changes it in some places and leaves it in others. Or something like that.